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FIRST LOOK -- “Behind Obama’s Populist Make over,” by Newsweek’s Howard Kurtz: “Obama warned against playing small ball [when devising the jobs bill]. ‘I do not want the first filter to be whether it can get the support of House Republicans,’ he told his staff.” David Plouffe: “When people see really dark clouds, no matter how good a line in a speech is, you're not going to convince them the sky is blue. … There are a lot of business leaders who are Republicans who don't identify with this brand of Tea Party Republicanism.” … Peter Orszag: “One of the mistakes was to put much too little weight on the hard slog that typically follows financial slumps.” …

--Steve Case, a member of Obama's jobs council: “The first two years the business community felt the White House team didn't really engage in business and not enough people on team had the kind of experience we really needed. We thought they were tone deaf.” … David Axelrod: Republican's have done “diabolically well” at creating “a dysfunctional political system” and blaming it on Obama.
TODAY IS LAST CALL for Hawk ’n’ Dove, “Washington’s oldest Irish bar,” a Capitol Hill landmark for 44 years. The Hawk is closing for good tonight to make way for a mahogany-heavy makeover by a new owner. Some of the cooks and waiters plan to move to the next-door Tune Inn, which was shuttered by a June kitchen fire but is due to reopen in several weeks. Signs outside Tune Inn say: “Your Favorite Dive Bar Will Be Serving Drinks Again Soon.” During Packer games, the Hawk served bloody Marys with a shot of Miller Lite. Fixtures and decorations are being auctioned online.http://bit.ly/qqJgH2

STEVEN RATTNER, writing on POLITICO, “Ron Suskind's inaccurate revisionism”: “Suskind’s narrative does not resemble my experience working for President Barack Obama, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers on the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler. All told, the book amounts to a drive-by shooting of a president and his key economic advisers … When only two people are part of a conversation, and it reflects badly on one, it’s pretty obvious who the mole was. That also means that the conversation is based on only one source — not exactly high-quality journalism.” Steven Rattner, who served as counselor to the Treasury secretary and lead auto adviser in the Obama administration, is the author of “Overhaul: Inside the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry.”http://politi.co/oH3oSC

--Suskind’s “ Confidence Men” debuts at #2 next Sunday on N.Y. Times nonfiction bestseller list, behind “Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy.”

BREAKING – WashPost A1, lower-left corner, “Rick Perry and a word set on stone: The candidate calls the old name of his family’s Texas hunting camp ‘offensive,’ but what he did about it is unclear,” by Stephanie McCrummen in Paint Creek, Tex.: “In the early years of his political career, Rick Perry began hosting fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters at his family’s secluded West Texas hunting camp, a place known by the name painted in block letters across a large, flat rock standing upright at its gated entrance. ‘Niggerhead,’ it read. Ranchers who once grazed cattle on the 1,070-acre parcel on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River called it by that name well before Perry and his father, Ray, began hunting there in the early 1980s. … But the name of this particular parcel did not change for years after it became associated with Rick Perry, first as a private citizen, then as a state official and finally as Texas governor. … As recently as this summer, the slablike rock — lying flat, the name still faintly visible beneath a coat of white paint — remained by the gated entrance to the camp. When asked last week, Perry said the word on the rock is an ‘offensive name that has no place in the modern world.’ …

“In his responses to two rounds of detailed, written questions, Perry said his father first leased the property in 1983. Rick Perry said he added his own name to the lease from 1997 to 1998, when he was state agriculture commissioner, and again from 2004 to 2007, when he was governor. … ‘When my Dad joined the lease in 1983, he took the first opportunity he had to paint over the offensive word on the rock during the 4th of July holiday,’ Perry said in his initial response. ‘It is my understanding that the rock was eventually turned over to further obscure what was originally written on it.’ In response to follow-up questions, Perry gave a more detailed account. ‘My mother and father went to the lease and painted the rock in either 1983 or 1984,’ Perry wrote. ‘This occurred after I paid a visit to the property with a friend and saw the rock with the offensive word. After my visit I called my folks and mentioned it to them, and they painted it over during their next visit. … Ever since, any time I ever saw the rock it was painted over’ …
“Perry’s version of events differs in many respects from the recollections of seven people, interviewed by The Washington Post, who spoke in detail of their memories of seeing the rock with the name at various points during the years that Perry was associated with the property … [One] local who visited the property with Perry and the legislators in those years recalled seeing the rock with the name clearly visible. ‘I thought, “This is going to embarrass Rick some day.”’ … This story is based on interviews with more than two dozen people, including residents, hunters, ranchers, government officials and others … [S]even … said the block-lettered name was clearly visible at different points in the 1980s and 1990s. One, a former worker on the ranch, believes he saw it as recently as 2008.” http://wapo.st/rds2Uj

TOP TALKER -- L.A. Times col. 1, “Watching a screen? It watches you too: There’s little privacy for TV, computer and smartphone users as firms lap up data,” by David Sarno: “[I]t's not just the iPhone that's keeping track. Buying milk at Ralphs? Playing World of Warcraft? Texting dinner plans to friends? Watching an episode of ‘Glee’? It's all recorded. … The modern home, stocked with networked devices, has become a digital transmission station, endlessly relaying data to a wide array of for-profit companies that are largely invisible to the average parent and child. This explosion in the amount of data being collected has raised alarms in state capitols and in Washington, where lawmakers of both parties have proposed more than a dozen pieces of privacy legislation this year. … The data are sifted for behavior patterns that can be of great value to marketers eager to zoom in on the consumers who are most likely to buy their products. … Apple … offerings … include a mobile advertising system called iAd that allows advertisers to target consumers based on their current location. …
“Loyalty cards allow … chains to capture years of data about what each customer is buying — data they farm out to companies that specialize in scrutinizing the information for buying trends. … ‘We've found grocery retail to be a rich and fertile vein,’ said Matt Keylock, an executive at Dunnhumby, which processes data for dozens of retail chains worldwide, including Home Depot, Best Buy and Ralphs owner Kroger Co. Whether the data tell them a customer is an adventurous, frugal, healthy or family-focused consumer, he said, ‘you can bring to life who a customer is based on the kinds of things they buy.’ …

“The tendency of social network users to declare their interests to friends has become a boon to online marketers. On Facebook, advertisers can target their pitches to thousands of sub-categories that users have identified with, whether that's ‘gay marriage,’ ‘World War II history’ or ‘insects.’ (There are 6,600 U.S. Facebook users who have declared an interest in ‘insects,’ according to an advertising tool on the site.) … ‘By watching transactions and clicks we have a massive telescope into human behavior at a scale we've never had before,’ said Prabhakar Raghavan, the head of Yahoo Labs … Boxes like those from TiVo, Time Warner Cable and Verizon can monitor what consumers are watching at any given second. Set-top-box data can include whether viewers have changed the channel, fast forwarded through commercials or muted the volume.” http://lat.ms/nCRU1E

--PLAYBOOK BEST PRACTICES -- This L.A. Times p.1-er has an italic endnote about its anecdotal passages: “The Hartman family was located with the assistance of the American Public Media's Public Insight Network, a resource for news organizations to find readers and radio listeners interested in contributing to articles.” This is a laudable idea for building trust between a news organization and its readers. Some articles are later criticized online for being embarrassingly dependent on sources supplied by a particular group. A note like this takes readers behind the scenes, and encourages rigor and candor by reporters.

N.Y. TIMES’ “THE LONG RUN” DEBUTS FOR THIS CYCLE – col. 1, “Seeking Taxes, Romney Went After Business: Strategies as Governor Buck C.E.O. Image,” by Michael Barbaro, in Boston: “Mitt Romney … had run for governor pledging to sweep aside barriers to business and act as the state’s ‘top salesman.’ But just a few months after Mr. Romney took office in 2003, what he delivered seemed anything but friendly to the C.E.O. crowd: a bill to financial firms for what they saw as $110 million in new corporate taxes … For the next three years, the Romney administration relentlessly scoured the tax code for more loopholes, extracting hundreds of millions of corporate dollars to help close budget gaps in a state with a struggling economy. It was only after Mr. Romney was gearing up in 2005 for a possible White House bid that he backed away from some of his most assertive tax enforcement proposals amid intensifying complaints from local companies and conservative antitax groups in Washington. …

“An examination of the period … shows a governor who sometimes put the need to find new revenues ahead of the conservative argument that tax increases almost by definition kill jobs … Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for Mr. Romney and a former aide in his administration, defended his record, saying he had been on good terms with a business community that benefited from a variety of his economic development policies. ‘Did they see eye to eye on everything?’ Mr. Fehrnstrom said. ‘Not always. But more than anything they appreciated the strong leadership Mitt Romney brought to the governor’s office in getting the budget under control and bringing the state economy out of its tailspin.’ … Grover Norquist … acknowledged that he had been deeply disappointed by Mr. Romney’s corporate tax overhaul. Unlike the governor, Mr. Norquist regards the changes as tax hikes. ‘They changed the laws and the rules to significantly raise taxes … That is a tax increase. … The important thing … is that his stated position is that it won’t happen again.’” http://nyti.ms/oaQOSx

** A message from Google: There’s nothing more invigorating than some fall hiking. But before you hit the trails, grab your gear from www.Backcountry.com. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, www.Backcountry.com can outfit even the most extreme outdoorsman or woman for their outdoor excursions. Jim Holland and John Bresee started Backcountry in 1996, and today they employ 650 people in their store and warehouse, thanks in part to their online sales. Local businesses like Backcountry are growing. And Google is helping. **

BIRTHDAYS: Ken Bazinet … Joanne Peters, press secretary for the Democratic National Convention, is 30; came back to D.C. from Charlotte to celebrate this weekend (hat tip: Kristie Greco) … David Wilhelm -- pride of Ohio University, former DNC chairman under President Clinton, early Obama supporter -- is 55 … Courtney Hazlett (h/t Patrick Gavin) ... Annie Leibovitz is 62 … Kelly Ripa is 41 … Julie Burton … Emmett Beliveau (h/ts Teresa Vilmain).
STATE VISIT:Evan Fishman of UBS, in from Atlanta for college visits with his son, Sam, a junior (checked out Maryland, G.W., American).
--Evan was SPOTTED last night at Shelly’s Back Room with ABC’s Rick Kaplan, who last week won his 45th and 46th Emmys (30 of them are in boxes).

WEEKEND WEDDINGS:
--“Marissa Hopkins, James Secreto” – NYT Sunday Styles p. 16: “Marissa Connie Hopkins and James Vincent Secreto were married Thursday in Washington. The Rev. James J. Greenfield, a Roman Catholic priest, officiated at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church. On Saturday evening, Father Greenfield led another ceremony at Glen Echo Park in Glen Echo, Md. The bride, 31, is the special assistant to the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, and served in the same role under Mr. Carney’s predecessor, Robert Gibbs. She graduated cum laude from Boston University. … The bridegroom, also 31, graduated … from the University of Michigan. In May, he received a law degree cum laude from Georgetown and a Master of Public Policy from Harvard. Until 2007, he was a project coordinator at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner … The couple were introduced by a mutual friend in November 2004 after they had both worked on the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry.” With pichttp://nyti.ms/qcJmr3
--“Carolyn Coda, Richard Ward” – NYT Sunday Styles p. 17: “Carolyn Grace Coda and Richard J. Ward III were married Saturday at St. Charles Borromeo Church in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. The Rev. Chapin Engler, a Roman Catholic priest, performed the ceremony. The bride, 29, is a vice president for regulatory affairs in Washington at Swiss Re, the reinsurance company in Zurich. … The bridegroom, 30, is a communications adviser in Washington for Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky. He graduated from Yale and received a master’s magna cum laude in government and political communications from Johns Hopkins University. He is the son of Maureen M. Ward and Mr. Ward Jr. of Bronxville, N.Y. The bridegroom’s father retired as a director of institutional trading for Merrill Lynch … His mother retired as a librarian at Concordia College in Bronxville.” With pichttp://nyti.ms/qDnyr7

--“Miriam Goldstein, Michael Calderone,” NYT Sunday Styles p. 16: “Miriam Allegra Goldstein and Michael Louis Calderone were married Wednesday at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau … Mrs. Calderone, 33, is a book editor for ASCD, an education association in Alexandria, Va. … Mr. Calderone, 31, is the senior media reporter for The Huffington Post in New York. He graduated from Rutgers and received a master’s degree in journalism from New York University. He is the son of Cornelia A. Calderone and Peter J. Calderone of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J.” No photohttp://nyti.ms/rmvsN9

CRAZY FOR CHRISTIE –NYT p. 1, lower-left corner, “Pressed, Christie Team Checks Logistics of Joining 2012 Race,” by Michael D. Shear, David M. Halbfinger and Jim Rutenberg, with Jeff Zeleny and Nicholas Confessore: “One senior adviser said no campaign is under way but expressed confidence that one could be started in 24 hours … William Palatucci, a close confidant of Mr. Christie, … played down any immediate campaign planning, saying that his own weekend plans included ‘going to pick up my daughter from her sleepover.’ Those pushing Mr. Christie to run include the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, Nancy Reagan and the conservative columnist William Kristol. … Christie [recently] stopped by a breakfast of conservative columnists at the Hay-Adams Hotel … Kristol said he told Mr. Christie … he was ‘a big man for a big job.’” http://nyti.ms/mWQ9pR

--FLASHBACK I – Rutenberg, on NYT “Caucus” blog eight days ago: ““My only plan this weekend is to watch football,’ said William J. Palatucci … He jokingly noted that none of the games were in early voting states.” http://nyti.ms/nYnafI
--FLASHBACK II – Kristol, in a blog post nine days ago: “He is, in every sense, a big man for a big job.” http://bit.ly/qNkXqo
--Frank Bruni, author of “Born Round,” on the cover of the NYT’s beloved Sunday Review section, “The Round and the Oval: There shouldn’t be a weigh-in for the presidency”: “THERE are a great many things that Chris Christie is indeed too fat for. … But the presidency? That’s ludicrous. Downgrade Christie for his truculent style. Reject him for his limited experience. But don’t dwell on his heft, at least not to the extent that many Americans have been whispering — and some are now outright saying — you should. Girth doesn’t equal character. And mettle has better measurements than the number of scoops in your post-dinner sundae or miles in your pre-breakfast run. … I’d prefer a big fat president, governor or senator to one who’s constantly darting behind closed doors for a makeup touch-up or posing at a predetermined flattering angle for the C-Span camera. … Christie could figure out some way to drop scores of pounds, as Mike Huckabee got lavish praise for doing before his presidential bid. But did you see Huckabee when he provided TV commentary at the Iowa straw poll in August? What’s lost can often be regained; the physical is less permanent than the spiritual. That’s why we should focus less on it.” http://nyti.ms/q282PV

SPORTS BLINK – INSIDE AN NFL QUARTERBACK’S HEAD: “Bears can't seem to get rolling with Cutler: QB may not be problem but he certainly can't be sole solution,” by Chicago Tribune’s Brad Biggs: Jay “Cutler's starting record (18-16) is worse for the Bears than the man he replaced Kyle Orton (21-12) and [now-Redskins-starter Rex] Grossman (19-12), in a similar number of starts. Cutler was supposed to be Superman but in Week 4 of his third season here the franchise is trying to figure out what is wrong with the offense. … Cutler talks about being gun-shy after all the hits he has taken, an eye-opening admission. ‘Talk to any quarterback. Whenever he is getting a lot of pressure, getting flushed and getting hit a lot, that clock in your head is going to be tinkered with a little bit … It's going to start ticking a little bit faster. Even sometimes when you do have a good amount of time, you're going to be feeling it even if it's not there. It's a constant battle.’ … Cutler is 28 and he's no longer a young gun on the rise. There's not a lot the Bears can do about that because just getting Cutler hasn't been enough. Maybe it's time to start thinking about some other solutions.” http://trib.in/n1RJMY
--COLLEGE FOOTBALL: “Wisconsin, Alabama assert their dominance” – AP’s Top 25 roundup: “Wisconsin and Alabama turned their conference showdowns into mismatches. Behind Russell Wilson, the seventh-ranked Badgers erased an early deficit and pounded eighth-ranked Nebraska 48-17 in the Cornhuskers' first Big Ten game … Trent Richardson was the star for No. 3 Alabama, which knocked Florida quarterback John Brantley out of the game late in the first half and routed the 12th-ranked Gators 38-10. … [T]he national championship race got some clarity, with the teams at the top of the rankings asserting their dominance. Wilson accounted for three touchdowns and has emerged as a Heisman Trophy contender. Same goes for Richardson, who set a career best with 181 yards rushing. The Badgers, the defending Big Ten champions, could see Nebraska again at the conference title game. The Crimson Tide and Gators could also be paired up down the road in a league championship game.”

OB…..falling back on the dictionary isn’t especially clever and it’s too early to play scrabble with you. Pulling out Webster’s doesn’t provide for a ‘gotcha’ moment. Now, as a point of education, look up the word ‘nuanced’. (I’m not going to do it for you because that’d be too much like a social program. You’d get something for nothing.) I think that word effectively explains how words take on different meanings given the context of the discussion. Let’s get to the facts. I admit to a measure of cynicism. I do not believe that your definition fits mine. My cynicism leads me to question things. Question motivations. Question results. Try that sometime. It doesn’t hurt, and is low in MSG. I’ll further admit that I think that many politicians are motivated by self interest. That’s why we should send them less money. It’s the only way to make sure you don’t get less than you pay for. I’m sure that someone out there, including the Chief Executive, thinks more spending on failed programs is just fine. I just read they continued to pump cash into Solyndra even after it was determined a failed project. Sound familiar? Even a moron can figure out that you can’t ‘make it up in volume’ when you make something for $7 and sell it for $3. I, of course, am using real human math, not liberal math. California? Broke! Illinois? Broke! Chicago within Illinois? Way Way broke! Point out a liberal enclave (Other than Berkeley…and I think that’s crony capitalism at work on the part of folks like Nancy P. Don’t have the desire to prove it, so I’ll leave it in the ‘I think’ category.) that really works….and can defend itself. I don’t think it exists…but you can educate me.

Regarding the military, I think we get what we pay for. We can blow things up better than anyone in the world. We use more restraint than anyone in the world with possibly the exception of the British and the mighty forces of Burkina Faso (I’m kidding about that last one.). Someone needs to spend the money to keep the barbarians from the gate. Are the Germans going to? They’d be speaking Russian were it not for the coin the US spends on its mighty war (…or peace) machine. The French? Likewise. British? Likewise. You provide the country, I’ll make an argument that they have spent money on failed social programs that ‘we’ spent on tanks, satellites, artillery, etc. All good investments in my view. Ours of course, not theirs. Their societies are on the verge (..or at) of failure due to giving people too much stuff. Too much time off. Too much health care. Too much in retirement benefits. Someone (Folks like Me I’d imagine) has to pay for that kinda stuff. Hey…wait a sec…that sounds like US! Yeah…we’re heading to the place those folks are trying to get away from, and it’s folks like the CIC who are leading the way.

Now to the nuanced part. I hope you were paying attention earlier. My major argument about Obama is that he’s incompetent in many arenas, but mostly he’s not what he made himself out to be. Did you disagree that the OBL smack down was unilateral? If yes, you perhaps should look that word up too. He was going to be the guy that made the waters fall, the lion lay down with the lamb, blah blah blah. He was also going to be a cooperator. Did that Pakistan smack down seem like one of those? As I mentioned, I was with him on that one, but he did act contraty to the person who he said he was. Ya can never count on a politician to stay bought I guess. Obama is a man with many faces, few that can be trusted or believed. Look to the most current legislation in the Senate. It’s ‘baaaad Republicans’ because uneducated Americans probably believe that ‘they’ run the Senate. Do some research. Check the polling. During the last election, a large portion of the voting populace believed Republicans had the House and Senate. Are you among that group?

On a more personal note, OB, I think I’ve tried with some success to treat even opposing viewpoint with courtesy. I am a Republican married to a Democrat. I try to be respectful of her opinions, though I don’t get the same consideration from her. I try not to vilify individuals, as I’m sure you’re not trying to vilify me. Are you? If you were the person you pretend to be, and I ‘believe’ you suggest that you don’t agree with Obama, then why are you arguing with me? You should be refining my points rather than arguing with them. That leads me to believe you may possibly have drank the Obama cool aide. Time’ll tell. Why not show your posts? I clearly have nothing to hide. Do you?

Racial slurs are the little bumps on the butt of politics. Elevating them, like the Washington Post did today, simply is an effort to denigrate an honest candidate.

Offensive to some? sure. Washington Redskins persist despite those numerous little bumps. And remember those tasty nuts we used to call ******toes? Or those "slingshots" we used to call ******shooters? Or that Colorado Coal Company: ******head? Of course. So what? They are history, as is the name of the shooting area Rick Perry frequents. Again, so what?

Much more offensive was Obama's reference to Navy Corpse-men. That was stupid. Perry isn't stupid like that.